Pondering the future of the suit has been a recurring theme running through the Paris menswear shows. So to Dior Homme, a house that is one of the top resources of reflex choice for the men of the French corporate establishment—nay, the world—and those who are on the rungs below: A Dior tie, at the very least, is a safe, neutral, recognized international passport for businessmen everywhere. But what of the next generation, or, frankly, those men who are now in their 30s and 40s, who’ve been slobbing around in sneakers, jeans, and sweatshirts and making a living out of the tech economy? May they be reformed?

Kris Van Assche has been thinking about that. “People are talking a lot about how young men don’t like wearing tailoring now,” he said. “But maybe they’re not giving them the right tailoring. I wanted to concentrate on that.” The last time cool young men actually did wear tailoring—in a pose-y, competitive, pop cultural one-upmanship sort of a way—was the late ’70s and early ’80s, the time of New Wave through to Jean Paul Gaultier, at the birth of new style magazines and the music-video medium of MTV. That’s where Van Assche began. It helps that he comes from Belgium, where the idea of style subcultures and the principles of underground integrity have persisted forever. His cross-generational antidote was a tailoring-proud collection he labeled HarDior, shorthand, to him, for the sybaritic escapism of hard-core boy clubbing.